He had his moments against the Steelers on Sunday night when he put on a clinic in coverage, had impact rushing the passer and continued to show himself to be a quality finisher as a tackler. He is the leading tackler on a defense in the league’s top 10 in both scoring and total defense as well as tied for the team lead in interceptions and third in sacks.

The love doesn’t stop there for the Chargers’ first-round selection. Bleacher Report’s Dan Pompei wrote about how James is redefining the safety position. His positional value is interesting:

According to James, he has played every position in the Chargers defense except middle linebacker and nose tackle. He has been at strong safety about 50 percent of the time and free safety about 40 percent of the time. The other 10 percent of the time he has split between nickel corner, outside corner, edge-rusher, defensive end, strong-side linebacker and weak-side linebacker.

Positional splits like that just don’t happen. If you remember, Cardinals QB Josh Rosen said James is “a linebacker and corner in one player.”

So because the offense can’t key on James, it’s wise to deploy him from different positions. The Chargers’ defensive coordinator agrees:

“If he becomes a guy where offenses are very aware of where he is on the field, then you want to keep deploying him in different spots,” Chargers defensive coordinator Gus Bradley says. “At times, you’d like him as a rusher. At times, you like him in the middle third. At times, you like him in the box. So I think it’s just making sure you want to have him around the ball as much as possible.”

As a pass rusher, James has had quite a bit of success. According to Pro Football Focus, he has 48 pass-rush snaps, four sacks, 15 pressures, two hits and nine hurries, and his pass-rush productivity grade of 21.1 is second-best in the NFL among players with at least 25 rushes.

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